On February 15, 1933, Lou Hutt, a photographer with Paramount News, was in Miami’s Bayfront Park waiting to cover a speech by President Franklin Roosevelt.

When Roosevelt’s motorcade came in, he came in from a bad angle and had his back facing Hutt’s camera. Hutt left his camera running and in the care of his soundman and went to speak with Roosevelt before he started his speech to ask him to face towards his camera while speaking.

One of the members of the audience that had gathered to see the President that day was an unemployed bricklayer by the name of Giuseppe Zangara. When Roosevelt started to speak to the crowd, Zangara stood up on a chair and started to shoot at the President. Zangara’s shots missed Roosevelt but hit five other people, including Chicago Mayor Anton Cermak who was fatally wounded in the stomach.

Lou Hutt, who was standing near the car after speaking with the President, was splattered by Cermak’s blood. He ran for his still running camera to cover the events to follow.

Hutt never gave much of an interview of that story that I could find except for what I transcribed below:

“Roosevelt was coming to Miami that night and was to reach the bandstand at 9 p. m. I’d arranged with the lights company to put big Mazda lights above the stand and the President was to come in on top of the back seat of his car, facing the camera on a platform.

He happened to come in from the wrong side and rode past us. All we got was a back shot.

I left my camera running (by motor) and the sound man with it. I went around to speak with Mr. Roosevelt.

“Mr. President,” I said, “will you swing around so we can get a front shot of you.”

“I got shots of Roosevelt being taken away, Cermak taken away, Zangara in the mix-up that followed.”

As followups to the shooting itself, Hutt also shot an interview of Lillian Cross who grabbed Zangara’a arm in an attempt to stop the assassination attempt as well as an jailhouse interview of Zangara himself.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HegHSi5_SZk